Terrorism in fiction
O'Grady, Desmond
tary, set in a journalistic background. In many respects that is a in its day three other programs: Phyllis a sitcom, Rhoda, wise decision, for it has been done before in different ways, ...
...Italian...
...This is a lived-in patrician-plebeian mix with sumer rubbish is probably the most valuable function of palaces and craftsmen's shops side by Worst of all, he does it with su- imaginative writers even though the side...
...Unfortunately, the balance Commonweal: 564...
...But in A shipwreck victim, unable to Content is not the sole criterion for a the rush for immediacy, it tends to be swim, novel's relevance or worth, as is shown overlooked that novelists can also rehas never been delirious with joy by Ferdinando Canon's work...
...He complained that Italian DESMOND O'GRADY is an Australian jour- The Red Brigades, who showed sophisti- novelists, always as "insignificant as nalist and short-story writer living in Rome.cated knowledge of the media, supplied English composers," continued to conCommonweal: 562 centrate on petit-bourgeois, intimate is- Moro's kidnapping...
...Like a saint, a movie star has to have met rigid standards to be canonized, and her life LADD SELF-PORTRAIT story has to demonstrate her conformity Beverly Unet Gene Tierney to these universal norms of conduct...
...ely all the published evidence as if con- property (by stealing...
...Bantam, $2.95, 307 pp...
...Tierney therefore devotes only a third or fourth take, I realized that one leading men...
...After 55 days the next Red Brigades communique ers if events themselves are 'imprisonment in which there were fre- would arrive as if they and the terrorists shaped like a gripping play with quent messages from Moro himself and were working in harness to keep the specstrong symbolism...
...into an award-winning dramatic series...
...autobiographies of movie stars are...
...This was the case his Red Brigades kidnappers, his bullet- tacle alive...
...The debate between those who compthe Mafia...
...It is, in TV terms, as though Private Doberman tal, and introduced only in ways that satisfied the show's got his own spin-off from the Phil Silvers Show and parlayed it dramatic needs...
...No one ever says "scoop" and I so it seems, tackles a fashionable injustice, and the conclurather wish they would...
...eto region which was made into a televi- Brigades, in fact, reduce life to purely Many Italian writers recoil from their sion serial...
...of The Defenders, which was also on CBS, and ran in the All of them were mediocre, and the only one that has early '60s...
...received 100,000 prepublication orders...
...more important than other few scant pages to the experience of mak- way to hold my trembling head still was mere movie stars...
...In many respects that is a in its day three other programs: Phyllis a sitcom, Rhoda, wise decision, for it has been done before in different ways, another sitcom, and another one still using the Ted Baxter and frequently with success...
...culture (by its en, Arbasino was impressed by reports of crime...
...He flew His book eulogizes the imprisoned ing...
...It is, in its way, a it...
...when former Christian Democrat Prime ridden body was left equidistant between The novelist Albert Arbasino asserted Minister Aldo Moro was kidnapped on the Christian Democrat and Communist that Italian fiction writers' concerns were his way to parliament for a vote of confi- party headquarters...
...was money, and Lou Grant is a video testament to the proposiIt has also, in a peculiar way, made television history, but of tion that high-mindedness and dividends do not have to be a purely commercial sort...
...Morrow...
...There are still attractive aspects in preme gratification Moro affair aftermath has shown they Italian life and society which some Italand obviously from the eminence can bring valuable insights to immediate ian writers refuse to acknowledge...
...home but found, contrary to the newspa- Moro, whom Sciascia had previously The characters...
...Unlike the and a rich Roman high-school student sociological justification for everyy misnovelists Arbasino criticized, Sciascia's Desideria who tells him how she became deed...
...The novel is also a tribute to ety are simply determined not to recogpeasant culture and a meditation on deMontale found another motive for nize its positive features...
...Lou Grant, in short, lacks a sense of sions, like the presumptions, are painfully predictable...
...material to rekindle...
...However, Sciascia does not What is Moravia saying about rethe use of unexpected comparisons...
...journalism has never enjoyed anything like the professional Lou Grant makes a heroic effort to be credible, and it is popularity it has now, and how.long it will last I don't know, apparent that the producers have spent several afternoons in but television, ever profitable, knows whereof it speaks...
...The (female) modernization" has distorted the spirit Shortly before Moro's kidnapping, con- Voice dictates a program of transgression indicated the widespread dissatisfaction troversy had flayed over a film based on a and desecration supposed to make De- with Italian society...
...The book's epigraph contains the respond to a world-view but, perhaps beItaly for his journalism which is similar chilling phrase, "A man . . . cause the characters are cardboard, their to Tom Wolfe's reporting of the social died at the right moment" which sug- predelections remain sexual quirks rather scene but applied instead to the interna- gests Moro's death was politically con- than having wider significance...
...Stars succeed (as ing Laura with Otto Preminger, but ex- to keep it down, chin low, almost to my saints do) by a paradoxical kind of humil- pends at least a chapter.on her ultimately chest, and eyes up at Bogart...
...Canon, a spond to the Red Brigades by providing a as his ship flounders literary critic and poet, has written a convincing image of man which is not but there's no danger for balloon novel about terrorists in his native Ven- confined to the political sphere...
...does remember that in beginning the latfrom the start, but just goes to show that Stars assume that the last thing any- ter she invented her celebrated, much the star in question had roles to play on a body wants to read about is the making of imitated "Look": "By the end of the larger stage than Hollywood, and with movies...
...she was masturbating...
...Reporters are not always on the verge of tic, mind...
...She Bacall's...
...It was also lucky by choosing the right trade...
...In explain how the State could have volutionaries...
...Another strand in his fiction is Like Joan of Arc, Desideria hears a lain that Italy is not sufficiently modern reconsideration of historical events in a Voice but, in her case, it came to her as and those who argue that "rationalistic philosophical 'who-done-it' genre...
...Each episode was an independent examination of an inde- staggering thought, as though the runt of the litter were to grow pendent subject, and the background of legalism was inciden- into a beauty...
...He was, in his earlier incarnation, cast ideally as the lawyers...
...Now although modern Rome is is it a head-on grappling with social probture: ugly, the city center is still one of the lems...
...It worked ity...
...Here, at last, is a means by which the great goals for tears over the calamities they witness, any more than editors which we have striven can be achieved, and personal notoriety are so consistently impassive, or publishers other-worldly...
...Rome's Communist daily Paeae Sera ginity...
...religion (by impiIn London at the time Moro was tak- ducting a historical investigation into a ety...
...comes with it, too...
...comment on contemporary events...
...I am not at all morose foil to the WJZ news room...
...The recoil is la madre (An Altar for the Mother) . In Parents go to school so strong, the social events so impelling brief episodes, Camon builds a portrait of their children do without it that some feel they must comment on his mother, a sturdy, fearless, religious Our civilization is at its flood tide events directly...
...Samuel Goldwyn was wrong, and the Mary Tyler Moore Show, a situation comedy, which spun off message is very clear...
...It is, of course, a spin-off of the mutually exclusive...
...be unremitting crusades...
...Each episode, or self-conscious in its maturity...
...pay attention to everyday life's minutiae THIS INTERPRETATION is disputed by rather than to the more or less institu- I N JUNE Alberto Moravia's novel The others such as the literary critic Carlo tional sources of information such as Interior Life (La Vita Interiore), on Bo and the playwright-poet-art critic newspapers...
...that Jack Kennedy played in Gene Tierney's life, for instance, is the one that autobiographies are inevitably disap- the roles that made her famous in The Big Adlai Stevenson played in Lauren pointing, at least if you're interested in Sleep and To Have and Have Not...
...Each relationship was doomed movies rather than movie stars per se...
...For instance, a skepticism about the contemporary soci- ath...
...by the Braudel school of historians who affair...
...lic drama...
...This Arbor House, $10.95, 294 pp...
...Books: HOLLYWOOD HAGIOGRAPHY IMAGINE what hagiography would be IT MTSELF l" DIM DEAUST JOAN CRAIIFORD like if the saints were supposed to Lauren Bacall Christina Crawford Bob Thomas write their own lives...
...and turned out to be the beginning of best works...
...The Red men-and he knows it...
...It's the kidnapping season Sciascia, who had been elected a We're told not to go out alone Palermo town councillor on a Com- The evening hours are the most munist ticket but resigned because of dangerous boredom, aroused the wrath of Italian But it goes without saying Communists when he refused to stand up that daytime is dangerous too and be counted among those defending The teachers of judo and karate the State and opposing negotiations after are in the seventh heaven 12 October 1979: 563 tailors make bullet-proof vests explanations of its defects...
...The program' sues without touching the problems book, L'Affaire Moro, he examined sol- consists in disrupting values such as which plague Italian society...
...Somehow, I am often reminded character, which lasted, I believe, for one evening...
...That's what the Knopf, $10.95, 377 pp...
...ing on the edge of the abyss," that they Leonardo $ciascia, the Sicilian Expectations were high for this 408-page have a reductive idea of man without any novelist, also pursued habitual methods imaginary interview between Moravia understanding of evil, and provide slick in his book on the Moro case...
...calls the "country of bla-bla...
...A key technique is venient...
...9.95, 286 pp...
...Journalists could sense when WHAT IS the effect on fiction writ- ment he had negotiated...
...They claim those who This State is in continuity with his novels issued with fanfares by its publisher who share Moravia's views are merely "dancwhich are attempts at social history...
...Wyden Books, $10.95, 264 pp...
...pale and private compared with this pubIt was a media event par excellence...
...PHILIP TERZIAN ITALY'S WRITERS CONFRONT THE RED BRIGADES Terrorism in fiction DESMOND O'GRADY dence in the new government based.on.a...
...Frankly, some of the casual chaos that used to be thrown into That, after all, comes partly near what General Sarnoff must the station house on Kojak would be in order here...
...What he also had in mind, to be sure, were it not so antiseptic, it could avoid...
...They despise as unworthy their own non-existent romance with Kennedy...
...tional cultural circuit...
...The role Colin L. Wosterb.ck, Jr...
...The interviewer makes inThis State likewise uses provocative negotiated with the Red Brigades without telligent observations on them but the comparisons such as that between Moro losing its remaining credibility nor novel's revolutionaries are as squalid as and Maria Goretti who was canonized exactly what could have been offered in all the other characters...
...Marshall's law practice seemed to prosper enjoyed any sort of durable success is Lou Grant, a dramatic extravagantly despite the fact that he paid so little attention to series created from the rib of a comedy...
...After a time, the effect diminishes...
...few years ago a book appeared in which It is not one of the intimate, still-life ety in the breakdown of standards among one Italian writer after another decried interiors Arbasino criticized but neither academics who concentrate on pop cul- Rome...
...respect for life (by killItalians' dramatic reactions...
...But his best novel is the win- political terms, a danger that Italian intelsociety even though they give contrasting ner of the 1978 Strega prize Un altare per lectuals constantly run...
...Incidentally, proceeds from Sciascia's commented: "The novel tells us more In writing what he calls an "an- brief book, which inspired countless about Moravia than about thropological diary of a choral happen- newspaper discussions, are to fund re- revolutionaries-but, alas, we knew ing," Arbasino claims he was inspired search into press coverage of the Moro about him already...
...of a chair he despises...
...love (by prostitution...
...interest whenever it Christian Democrat-Communist agree- declined...
...He further asserts that In which he worked for seven years, was Giovanni Testori...
...and only secondly by the Brigadists' bul- Moravia argues that sexual positions corArbasino r is probably best-known in lets...
...now he serves as a kind of certain that newspapers should turn themselves into large middle-aged, overweight axis around which the vigorous acconsumer action agencies, or that television programs should tivity revolves...
...Lou Grant, have had in mind when he would go on about television's for all its high-mindedness, has a kind of false ring to it that, potential as an educator...
...For instance, Debook, In This' State (In questo Stato), prison...
...rejection...
...As a reviewer in after preferring death to loss of her vir- exchange for Moro's release...
...In preparing his sideria a revolutionary...
...And the real world researching the sets and observing the activities...
...Rather it is a valid novel which seven wonders of the world not solely The interdisciplinary philosopher conveys attitudes and feelings rather than because of the architecture but because it loves to wallow in the filthiest con- remain at the level of facts or ideas...
...It is for this reason that theirBacall, similarly, has little to say about The Look...
...Moro was killed twice" is Sci- sideria's American mother, whose sexwhich exposes hypocrisy and the in- ascia's accusation: firstly by those who ual preference is anal intercourse, wants anities of "commonsense" in what he refused to recognize him in his letters, to practice incest with her daughter...
...He recorded reactions in a the desperate letters Moro wrote from sexual experiences...
...the tongues are free, without her dialect, she knew only a few words of And many who recoil from Italian socibrakes...
...fiction concerns social problems such as a terrorist...
...in this novel, which pers' rhetoric, widespread indifference, criticized, and accuses the politicians and Moravia has called a "study in sexual unaltered routines, sarcastic jokes about newspapers for refusing to take seriously semiotics," have a wide range of bizarre the affair...
...Lou Grant, whether intentionally or not, fulfills every underBut the upshot of that is that it is almost too slick, too graduate's dream of investigative romance...
...At times, however, I wish it weren't so...
...Lou Grant, I fear, is rather more heavy-handed than that, in Lou Grant, however, was more obviously destined to sucthe way, I suppose, that reporters are less circumspect than ceed...
...peasant whose extreme poverty was culnow that muzzles have broken tural as well as material (in addition to But this is not true of all Italian writers...
...The 81-year-old Sciascia novel, Todo Modo, which poet Eugenio Montale captured the mood showed Christian Democrats slaughter- in "Springtime Torpor" in his last voling one another during a weekend of ume Notebook for Four Years: spiritual exercises...
...is why the lives of both saints and stars have a certain sameness to them...
...Imaghumor, and some of the anarchy and comic genius of the ine, however, the effect this must have on a tender, yet idealisjournalistic life is lost...
Vol. 106 • October 1979 • No. 18
